Gender and edgework paradoxes in tree-planting in Canada

Abstract

Edgework refers to the experience of adventure and transcendence achieved through perseverance in risky situations. We draw from interviews with 26 tree-planters in Canada to show how tree-planting, a type of edgework, reveals elements of the edgework paradox. The paradox is that edgework provides escape from the late-modern urban world through control of the body under conditions of risk, but also involves laborious monotony that preserves structural conditions of alienation from which escape is sought. We argue that the edgework paradox is doubled for women in tree-planting: the performance of gruelling female masculinities in planting camps challenges gender norms (as tree-planting provides a context and space for the embodiment of masculinities for both women and men). The analysis of women in our study of tree-planting addresses the tendency in edgework literature to disproportionately focus on the experiences of men. We also reveal that the camp’s persistent culture of hegemonic masculinity maintains a hierarchy of appropriate gender performances, which consequently perpetuates gender inequality.

Keywords:

• Edgework
• embodiment
• gender
• masculinities
• risk
• tree-planting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Walby

Kevin Walby is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (University of Chicago Press 2012). He is co-editor of Emotions Matter: a Relational Approach to Emotions with Alan Hunt and D. Spencer (University of Toronto Press 2012). He has co-edited with R. Lippert Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in the 21^st Century (Routledge 2013) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). He is co-editor of Access to Information and Social Justice: Critical Research Strategies for Journalists, Scholars and Activists with J. Brownlee (2015, ARP Books), National Security, Surveillance, and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective with R.K. Lippert, I. Warren and D. Palmer (2017, Palgrave), as well as The Handbook of Prison Tourism with J. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, and J. Piche (2017, Palgrave). He is co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Anna Louise Evans-Boudreau

Anna Evans-Boudreau recently graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a B.A.H. in sociology where she wrote her Honours thesis paper on White Canada’s relationship to Indigenous Peoples. Her interests of study are gender, whiteness, crime, and mental health. She is now completing her law degree at University of Manitoba, Robson Hall Faculty of Law.